Possible spoilers ahead

When Scream Queens was released I watched the trailer to see what it was all about and I was horrified. I honestly couldn’t understand why anyone would want to watch this series. To me, it seemed incredibly dumb and childish and used many named actors and singers to bring in their audience. However, having nothing else really to watch I finally bit the bullet and decided to give it a go. And you know what? I loved it…well, until the end.

Scream Queens is about a group of young girls in a sorority house at university being killed off one by one by a person called the Red Devil. The Red Devil also goes after a frat house full of young men who love playing golf (yeah, weird character trait if I ever saw one). Over time we see them being killed off until finally the killer is revealed. Standard horror stuff.

I was worried about this series because of the casting. I thought they used this to get young teen girls into the show and boost their ratings. The cast included Ariana Grande, Nick Jonas, Lea Michelle and Keke Palmer to name a few. It also included Jamie Lee Curtis which I thought was nice because she was originally in Halloween and known for her scream abilities. A literal scream queen if you don’t mind the pun!

Watching this series it soon dawned on me: this is a parody! The whole thing is a parody from some of the deaths, to the characters and to way it’s filmed: it all parodies something. The characters are standard horror movies characters from the jock to the popular girl to the nerdy ones to the new girl. Everyone in this movie was a parody of a stock character. They all had certain traits that they showed off and didn’t change in any way. Some of the scenes as well mirrored lesser known horror movies including sequels that people may not have seen before. These little moments could easily be lost on people unless you know what they are parodying which I see as a shame.

The storyline was quite simple. A killer is going after sorority girls and boys as revenge for what happened in 1995. Simple. The differing factor from other horrors however is that there is more than one killer, mirroring Scream you could say. Early on we find out who one of the killers is but the other one’s identity is kept hidden until the last episode. The actual reveal of the killer seemed incredibly anti-climactic to me. It was a surprise and the reasoning behind it all was interesting but the way it was dealt with was over the top, absolutely not believable and felt unearned. To put some icing on the cake the killer also gets away with it. Other people are sent down for what they have done and it didn’t feel earned. We didn’t sympathise with the killer at all so we couldn’t be pleased that they got away; so there wasn’t really a great ending at all. Of course, it was different to what normally happens to the killers of horrors but it just didn’t feel earned. I don’t think the character deserved it anyway.

Due to the characters being one trait and only really that trait it was hard to connect with them. The only one you could really connect with was the main character Grace as she was new to the sorority and so had many different traits under her belt and these warped and changed through time.

I did love the parody effect of it but that was about it. It was interesting and kept you wanting more with cliffhangers and storylines but the ending definitely deflated the whole thing. Hopefully, seeing as they have somehow got the go ahead for a season two it will be better, but, if it uses the same characters again I doubt I’ll be watching.

What did you think of Scream Queens?

Until next time.

Published by shonaharding

Media graduate with a passion for reviewing film and TV. View all posts by shonaharding